Page 6 of Justice & Liberty

Once I’d moved in with her, all of my plans had altered to revolve around her. Tanya wanted to stay in LA, so I got a job in LA. Tanya wanted us to buy a car together, so we bought a car together.

I couldn’t help but smirk at that reminder. The car, after all, was in my name, just like the apartment was in hers.

“I don’t know what put that look on your face, but I’ll bet it’s the best thought you’ve had all day,” Estelle told me. She started shuffling through papers on the back counter, finally holding up two, her crimson red fingernails glittering with rhinestones in the too-bright overhead lighting. “You feel like sandwiches or Thai for lunch?”

“Thai,” I answered easily. I wondered if there was a decent Thai place within an hour of Mom’s old house. It could be a make-or-break question. I pulled out my phone and searched restaurants near South Liberty, Iowa.

Estelle ordered our usual, and I spent the time checking online reviews for the not one, not even two, but three Thai restaurants that were now within reasonable driving distance of my childhood home. All in Iowa City, no surprise there. I wondered if they hadn’t been there before, or if Los Angeles had altered my definition of “reasonable driving distance.”

South Liberty was a tiny town, with little more keeping it afloat than a general store, a gas station, and a library-and-museum dedicated to an early resident who had been famous.

It was, however, less than an hour away from the originalstate capital, Iowa City, which was a college town with a thriving population closing in on a hundred thousand. Also, it was so close to two smaller towns that they had essentially grown into each other: Coralville and North Liberty.

Not that those of us from South Liberty much liked to talk about our sister Liberty. Arrogant big city jerks, the lot of them.

There would be things I missed if I left LA, but the part of Iowa I’d come from wasn’t exactly the middle of the wilderness, and it was a bastion of common sense in the state.

Estelle was right. I was ignoring an opportunity that lots of people would kill for. I needed somewhere to be, and Mom’s house was sitting empty, her shop waiting for someone to run it.

Being “the girl with the purple hair” wasn’t so bad. I’d liked having purple hair; I just hadn’t liked the upkeep of having to bleach and dye it all the time.

My phone rang and it startled me initially, since when I was at the shop to work, I didn’t carry it on me. Without thinking, I answered it. “Jaycie Jones.”

“Miss Jones, we’ve located your luggage. It seems that it’s been sent back to Iowa.”

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.

3

Apparently you’re allowedto drive a truck that pulls your car on a trailer behind it with no special training or license. At least, the guys at the U-Haul shop didn’t so much as flinch at renting the whole rig to me, even though they had to show me everything about how to hook it up and use it.

I wasn’t sure I’d have managed to get my car onto the trailer without Estelle’s younger son DeShawn standing atop the thing, motioning me one direction, then the other, then forward, so I’d get the car on straight and into the right spot.

They’d saved my life, Estelle and her sons, helping me with the car trailer, and then even more, with moving the heavy furniture onto the truck.

I’d left the futon in the bedroom for Tanya, since we’d bought it together...and who knew how many other women she’d slept with in it. No, I didn’t need any part of that in my future.

But the sofa had been a gift from my friend Teresa when she’d moved to join her family in Australia after college, and she hadn’t even liked Tanya.

Driving the truck and trailer was uncomfortable andungainly, but that car was mostly paid off, and if Tanya was going to be an asshole about the apartment, then I was going to be an asshole about the car. Maybe I’d sell it when I got to Iowa, since I already had Mom’s car there, and Mom’s was an SUV with four wheel drive, better suited to Iowa winters.

I didn’t tell Tanya I was leaving. Didn’t warn her that half the stuff in the apartment would be gone, or that she’d have to find someone else to pay my portion of the rent starting in April, just two weeks away.

Fuck her.

I just accepted Estelle and her sons’ help to get my stuff into the little moving truck I rented, and then slipped my key under the front door.

No reason to make it a loud, emotional moment. I’d realized at some point that I simply didn’t care enough about Tanya to make it dramatic, and in the end, that was a disservice to both of us.

Mom had taught me that love was supposed to be big sometimes, overwhelming and emotional, and if it wasn’t that, then it wasn’t enough. If I had really loved her, I’d have wanted to tear her hair out for her betrayal, and the fact that I didn’t meant I should have left ages ago.

I’d only stayed because it had been easy.

I refused to think about how that made her right, at least about me not choosing my own path.

When we were done packing the truck, I bought everyone pizza, hugged Estelle goodbye, and drove off into the sunset.

Okay, well, not really. I was heading east, so wrong direction for the sunset. Plus it had been just after one in the afternoon so no sunset at all, but whatever.

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